So yesterday I had a hectic but very informative and efficient first day at the office.

I arrived at 9am and started off with a meeting with the representative, the deputy representative and the operations manager. Thereafter, I was toured around to meet with and get introduced to all the staff members. Slightly overwhelmed by a million faces and names, I was happy about speaking Spanish and only accidently let “obrigada” slip through three times. The Portuguese was very much present on the tip of my tounge throughout the day and it took some efort to hold it back but I felt that I will be back on Spanish ground very soon as there only is four international staff in the entire office and the working language is Spanish. Joking about the language issue, I found out that three of the internationals had been to Portuguese speaking countries before coming here and were all very familiar with the battle, we played a couple of word games, laughed and moved on.

Back in business, I was briefed on security issues and earthquake precautions, got practical information, a ton of documents to read, and a couple to sign. I went to arrange my Nicaraguan sim card and UNICEF id, made sure that my banking details in the system were updated and all the previous administrative mess was cleaned up, got my computer and email set up, received the keys to my office, looked at four different apartments, and completely forgot to eat lunch.

In the evening, we came back home and ate a nice Nicaraguan dish, worked a little, played with sweet Ayane, spoke for a couple of hours over a bottle of white wine, and decided not to go out.